


Cross Our Imaginary Lines

by plumbobjo (plume_bob)



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Early Season 4, Hurt Daryl, Injury Recovery, Introspection, M/M, Protective Rick, Sexual Content, there is gardening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:17:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plume_bob/pseuds/plumbobjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl takes to bed rest as disagreeable as a fish to land but Rick avoids the whole thing with a kind of ruthless zeal, plowing soil and pulling weeds like he's on a mission from God, never setting foot inside that one cell block unless it's to talk to Hershel in the rec area.</p>
<p>Or, the story of how Daryl is persistent and Rick just wants to garden in peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cross Our Imaginary Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Written after watching episode 4.01, set before the outbreak.

 

 

 

“—walkers fallin' from the sky like some kinda Biblical plague.”

He comes into the story right there, right in that spot, and it's Daryl's voice doing the telling; Daryl who underplays everything from a partial thickness wound to a relative going postal.

Rick's conditioned to respond to everything just outside the ballpark of normal like a threat, and Daryl brings him to a dead stop right there on the gravel.

He catches Daryl's eye for a second, then up and down for injuries 'cause that's just automatic, and Daryl carries on, gesturing a kind of falling comet situation with his hands.

“Just started coming through the ceiling, whole bunch of 'em,” he tells a small cluster of eager ears. “I mean, most of 'em kinda splat, y'know—“

Paranoia satisfied, Rick steers a sharp right and away from the crowd.

“Anyway, we killed 'em,” Daryl finishes quickly and then there's some general discontent and Rick hears boots crunching up behind him. “Hey.”

Rick slants him a look. “Hey yourself.”

Daryl casts about a bit, twitchy and on edge. “Carol said something about getting used to the attention, I figure offence is the best defence.”

“You'll be a regular folk hero soon enough.”

“Tell me what _that's_ like.”

Rick huffs, keeps on walking, and Daryl stays in step, head turned like he's still waiting on an answer, all thoughtful intention and no mercy.

Rick ignores it a while, like ignoring anything ever works, and Daryl nudges him because he's good at proving points.

“I'm fine,” Rick tells him and doesn't add _before you ask_ because Daryl probably wouldn't ask, he'd just turn into a silent shadow for a while until Rick forgot he was there and started muttering to himself. “There was a woman.”

_Was._

Daryl just nods.

“We lost Zach.”

Rick's feet scuff up a little cloud of dust, a quick enough stumble to pass off. “Which one—“

“He was always with Beth.”

Yeah, he can see now; a fucking kid framed through the lens of Beth like that's the only way Rick can give him a face. Daryl doesn't give a shit if Rick doesn't know all the names but sometimes Rick wishes he did.

“Did you shoot the woman?”

It's an off question and Rick looks at him, Daryl chewing on his bottom lip.

“No.” Rick scoffs. “ _Council_ wanted me to have a gun, huh? Thought that was Hershel's idea.”

“More chance of you listening when there's a half-dozen people on your back.”

Daryl makes it sound petulant and Rick shakes his head, always ready to put an accusation like that right to bed before it sets him on some uncomfortable tangent.

“You're telling tales to your adoring public, getting Hershel to deliver your messages,” he drawls instead, giving Daryl a sly glance. “Hope you're not expecting me to be your bodyguard.”

The thing about Daryl is, he's not easy to distract but he is good enough to let it happen. Rick watches him bite down on a grin and quip, “Yeah, you got me,” and it gives Rick an almost crippling rush of affection.

He unchains the entrance to the yard, hesitating too much. “You actually comin' in here?” Daryl nods, that thoughtful look again. He wears it so much these days Rick's forgotten the alternative and maybe there wasn't one, he was just too busy chasing ghosts to notice. “Hope you're ready to dig some seedbeds.”

Daryl slips through the open gate. “I gotta see what you like about this so much.”

“Hershel thinks it might fix me,” Rick deadpans, locking them in, breathing deep. It's a logical fallacy, the fact he can smell fresh greens and loose soil on this side of the fence but not that one, but there it is all the same.

“You ain't broke, man.”

Daryl stoops low, swiping up a shovel, and Rick sees graves, just for a second—one second, that's all. He'd argue with Daryl's rationale, that steady optimism that'd be naïve on anyone else, but it won't get him anywhere and it never does.

He earned Daryl's devotion somewhere down the line and it stuck.

All that and his encroaching attention, Rick knows what it means, he's just not functional enough to take advantage of it. The feeling of loss he can entirely grasp, though. Relying on Daryl like his own lungs to breathe, an unconditional surrender, and he doesn't need Daryl to live anymore but that doesn't mean he knows how to stop.

“Need you—“ His throat convulses, that word choice right there, brain getting out in front of him again, “—uh, to till the earth in a line right here.”

Daryl props an elbow on his shovel dug in the ground. “That means mash it up, right?”

“Yeah, that means mash it up.”

“Gonna have to teach me the lingo.”

“I doubt it.”

He doesn't mean it to come out like that, all melancholy and mournful, but Rick's control is slippery as a rule and Daryl's rare but derailing company always manages to knock it down that extra couple notches.

Daryl clears his throat, looks away, and Rick aches just a bit more than usual. He slams his shovel in the ground; idle hands and all that. “Start here and work out, okay?”

“Sure.”

It used to be _check the basement_ or _head up to the guard post_ or _watch my back_ or—God, he could go on and on. It used to be Daryl's bolts in the skulls of whatever human or non-human threat at Rick's throat. Rick's heart draining him, never slowing down for a single second, and it hammers now like Daryl's a sense reminder, exertion sound he makes when he hits into the soil the exact weight and shape of Rick's most horrific memories.

Rick shovels like it's worth all his attention and lets it become a mantra, tries to get his heart to match it.

What Hershel actually said is that farming is therapeutic, and yeah, he's found it to be true, but the term unnerves him. Therapy implies a fight for long-term well-being and that implies their roots are deep enough here to stay safe permanently behind these walls and barbs.

The pigs and crops might imply that too, but that's just Rick feeling contradictory, his world fragmented and forked as always.

He sets Daryl on another line, shaping it like an order because it gives him a weird little thrill, and scatters and pushes in the seeds with his fingers, patting the soil and smoothing it down lovingly. There's a silence that he doesn't notice until it starts to press on his ears like a pressure change and he looks up at Daryl watching him.

It doesn't last long but it guts him all the same, hollow carved hole in him wanting to be felt.

They upturn and plant the last few meters and Rick can't think of anything else for Daryl to do that won't look like pointless stalling. It's not like Daryl wouldn't be glad for it, but he'd follow the request back to its core and see it for what it was.

“Appreciate the help,” he says, stiff and agitated.

Daryl hikes the shovel over his shoulder and shrugs the other, looks like he's cracking at the seams with the pressure of his silent thoughts. Whatever they are, Rick doesn't get to hear them, and they wordlessly tread back up to the gate.

He unlocks it, turns and sees Daryl's still got the shovel. “Taking that with you?”

Daryl huffs, “Oh,” and hands it over, length of wood feeling warm all over even though that's just another logical fallacy.

Rick's close enough to that fucking warm and dangerous expression to get brutally caught up and he grasps for a lifeline, clapping a hand over Daryl's shoulder like they used to all the damn time. He finds it fits differently now. Finds it was a bad idea.

“If you ever need a farmhand,” Daryl says dryly.

There's that word again. Rick's thumb twitches, slipping under the frayed hem of Daryl's vest and maybe that was an accident but the way he pushes into the skin and muscle underneath, feeling out the ridge of Daryl's collarbone, is really, really not.

Daryl shudders out a breath and then catches it, swallowing it down with a sharp click.

The implication of it is debilitating, stupefyingly so in comparison to what he's faced before, and Rick ducks his head, holding himself up with that incongruous hand digging right in, the up and down of Daryl's chest cycling air right there in front of him.

He manages to fumble some fingers into the fence links and haul it open and then he's at a loss, done his bit and all that and waiting on Daryl and any second now Daryl's gonna take one option or the other, the gate or those last dozen inches of space, and Rick sees it, that eager downward flick of his eyes.

Rick shoves him towards the gate as gentle as he can manage.

He tries to shrug it off, pats Daryl on the back where there's no skin, and Daryl narrows his eyes for an few anxious seconds like he might start something before he loosens up, letting himself be steered.

“If you see Carl, send him down, will you?”

“Sure.” Daryl hesitates those last few steps in the gateway. “Told you, if you need anything—“

“I'll be sure to send Hershel up to get you, Superstar,” Rick says, carefully folding it around a smile.

Daryl takes a harmless swipe at him, faux-pissed little pout and cuffing the side of Rick's head, breath of fingertips through his hair and a hot bolt of arousal down Rick's spine reminding him this ain't just going away.

 

~

 

Rick knows his name in the voice of every one of his people but Maggie's hollering from the top of the watchtower like a damn alarm is always some special kind of nightmare.

He drops his shovel, tosses the gloves, throws himself into a sprint until he hits the fence with a clang and by then he can see Carl running for the main gate, two figures, a lotta fucking blood—

One of them's Glenn, the one upright, and Rick's fingers vice-grip the keys, jam them into the lock all wrong until he can look away and hit the target.

The other's Daryl, Glenn really hauling him by the arm slung over his shoulder. It's Daryl and he's barely moving and that's where the blood is coming from.

Both gates open simultaneously and Rick leaves the yard one gaping, shouts at Carl hanging off the rope to take care of it because Carl will follow them straight up if he doesn't.

His boots skid on the concrete and he catches Daryl's arm—jacket sleeve torn up, all his exposed skin shining red—and ducks underneath it, pulling him up tight. He's barely fucking conscious and hanging heavy between them, dead fucking weight.

“The hell happened?”

Glenn tells him, quick and breathless, “He went out hunting and he wasn't back yet so I, I headed out to check he was okay.”

“Why didn't—“

Rick cuts it off, feels an anger surge that's completely counter-intuitive and swallows down every bit of it, just a sour stinging bile in its place burning all the way down to his stomach. They drag Daryl up the steps and Hershel's already at the door, letting them in and sticking close until they can lay Daryl down on a workbench.

There's clotting blood in his hairline like he got whacked with something and Hershel sets Glenn to talking, explaining how he found him, “Just lying there in the grass,” and then the thing they dread, the death sentence, but Glenn can't get the words out without stuttering, “I—I think he's, he's been bit.”

It's his forearm. Rick stands frozen still for some warped amount of time, thinking _no_ just over and over until he's saying it, falling to his knees by the bench and barely hearing his own voice, hearing anything except an amplifying tidal roar that's not even real. He grabs at Daryl's arm, trying to rub away the blood with his fingertips so he can _see._

“Rick. Rick!”

His neck snaps up, “ _What_?”

Hershel hands him a soaked piece of cloth and Rick doesn't have the breath to thank him; he's just too fucking cold all through him, too frozen fucking cold with his heart trying to shatter a hole in his brittle lungs.

Every strip of blood he cleans away shows up a mark, a deep gouge and spatter stains of bruises, but they're not uniform, they're not small. They're not teeth marks.

He swallows through his parched throat and buckles forwards, makes an awful wrenching noise of gratitude to whatever allowed Daryl to be just unconscious and bleeding instead of chewed up by a walker. Forehead pressing into the crook of Daryl's elbow, still clinging to his wrist, pressing Daryl's hand into his throat like he can press pulse against pulse.

“His forehead needs a few stitches, it's pretty nasty,” Hershel tells Glenn softly, voices and rattling implements somewhere and nowhere. “Go fetch me some pain killers too.”

And then, “Rick?” when Rick thinks it might just be him and Hershel.

He looks up, blinking. “Why didn't anyone tell me he was missing?”

He doesn't truly expect that's gonna be the first thing out of his mouth when he opens it, but there it is, right out there.

“He wasn't missing, he was a little late, that's all. There was nothing to tell.”

“You should've—“

Hershel's hand comes down on his shoulder. “Glenn went out.”

“What'd he do,” Daryl gripes, suddenly not unconscious, “drag me all the way back by my arm?”

Rick jerks to his feet. “Goddamn.”

“Yeah,” Daryl agrees, then his expression twists, he curls his uninjured arm around his ribs. “Oh, _fuck_.”

Daryl's chest heaves and Hershel puts a palm over his heart, tells him, “Slow, breathe slow,” in the softest voice until Daryl starts to breathe with him, struggling less with his own self.

“Don't tell me,” he groans. “Don't even say it.”

“'Fraid you've bust some ribs, son.”

“What happened?” Rick asks him.

“Deer got spooked and came right at me,” Daryl tells them, getting himself pissed and trying to catch his breath back. “I dodged left, stupid dumb fuckin' deer dodged right.”

Rick shocks himself with what is definitely, actually a laugh. He cups a palm over his mouth and shakes his head and he's so damn relieved it hangs right on the borderline of hysteria.

“Not fuckin' funny, thing gored up my arm.”

“Damn sight funnier than a walker bite.”

Daryl looks at him sharply, doesn't need to even ask.

Hershel pulls at Daryl's jacket. “Help me get this off him.”

Rick holds out a hand for Daryl to take, heaving him up to half-sitting, but Daryl cries out like he's getting gutted and he can't hold himself, fingers white-knuckled around Rick's own. His ribs bust up have laid Daryl out before and Rick hazards it might be the same damn ones again, not healed right or something because they never could find the time. Because the past loves to creep in sometimes and test them when things are looking up.

“S'okay, I gotcha,” Rick mutters, pulling the torn jacket down to Daryl's elbow and sitting on the edge of the bench, reinforcing himself square at Daryl's back to hold his weight.

Hershel wrestles the jacket the rest of the way off, unbuttons Daryl's shirt to inspect the canvas of bruises, and Daryl's head falls back against Rick's collarbone, familiar smell of blood and sweat that he's paradoxically missed and not missed.

Glenn's quick footsteps later and Hershel presses an Oxycodone against Daryl's mouth and follows it up with a water bottle to drink it down.

Rick just doesn't move, not while Hershel's stitching up the worst of the gouges in Daryl's forearm or when he's swabbing the clotted blood away from Daryl's head injury. Doesn't know if it's 'cause he wants to be here propping Daryl up or because he physically can't make himself not be.

And Daryl's weight is in full, there's nothing reluctant in how he treats Rick like he's something sturdy. His arm stays curled loose and lazy over his ribs, his eyes are heavy when Rick dares to look down that much.

Hershel slaps his cheek, startling them both. “Don't fall asleep.”

“Don't give me Oxy, then,” Daryl gripes, pauses, and goes on quite enthusiastically, “Half an Oxy and I'd be—“ He whistles. “Mom used to crush up her pills and put 'em in our food as kids when she wanted some quiet.”

“That so?” Hershel asks. Five, six stitches and he's looking almost done.

“Ours. Me and Merle and me.”

Rick cocks his head right down to get a better look at Daryl's face, slack and untroubled and then eyes up and across to Rick's when he gets into his sightline.

Daryl's mouth turns up at the corner. “Hey.”

Rick sits back up, gets away from that real fast. “Is this a concussion or is he just that doped?”

“A little of both,” Hershel muses.

Rick doesn't think he's ever had the cause to notice Daryl goes down hard on pain meds, but it's something he tucks away.

“Don't talk about me like I'm not here,” Daryl complains. “Doped. _You're_ doped.”

Hershel nods along. “We have to wrap his— _your_ ribs.”

And so they do that, Daryl sitting up mostly on his own with the drugs in him but Rick keeps a hand in the middle of his shoulder blades all the same, all damp skin against his palm, his knuckles when they pass the bandages back and forth.

The proximity and relief and just Goddamn _intimacy_ makes for a real cocktail and Rick feels drugged off it himself, Daryl literally in his hands when there's been nothing like it for months. He finds his fingers digging into Daryl's muscle, pushing hard up over the notches of his spine and into the back of his neck, all sorts of tiny, up-close reactions from Daryl that could be as much Rick as anything right now.

The skin over his shoulders is gooseflesh and Rick wants, with a startling urgency, to put his mouth there.

When they're done, Daryl comments, “I look like a Scooby Doo villain,” and he ain't wrong, ribs wrapped and arm bandaged and he point-blank refuses anything but a tiny bandaid over the stitches on his forehead.

There's no good reason for Rick to be sitting anymore so he gives Daryl a pat and gets to his feet. Daryl reaches out, grips his shoulder and uses it to swing his legs over the side of the bench and for his trouble ends up doubled over in a wheezing mess of agony.

“I shouldn't have to tell you stuff like that is a bad idea,” Hershel says, infinitely patient. “Move slow, if you have to move. As of now you're on bed rest.”

“How about no,” Daryl whispers roughly.

“Don't make me get the council involved.”

“I'm on the council, I vote no.”

Hershel looks set to argue, but he seems to think better, glancing at Rick instead, making him jump in just by the weight of his stare. “Daryl, Glenn dragged you in here thinking you were bit, just do what Hershel says,” and then he adds a quiet, “please,” that sounds all too desperate and insubstantial.

If anything, Daryl looks even less happy about it, but he jerks his head in some approximation of a nod anyway. Hershel turns away, taking the little tray of equipment and pink-stained cloths with him, and there's nothing left but the two of them and a silence that's thick and awkward for no good damn excuse.

_There's a fucking council for a reason_ , he wants to say.

_I'm not your leader anymore,_ too.

But worst of all is right on his tongue, that dreadful _please_ again, the whys and what fors of it and all the ways that it makes Daryl follow his lead anyway.

 

~

 

Daryl takes to bed rest as disagreeable as a fish to land but Rick avoids the whole thing with a kind of ruthless zeal, plowing soil and pulling weeds like he's on a mission from God, never setting foot inside that one cell block unless it's to talk to Hershel in the rec area.

He hears about Daryl doped-up and calling Glenn _Superman_ second-hand from Maggie relaying the anecdote to Beth. She hands him Judith and he presses his mouth into his baby girl's hair to hide the shadow of a rueful smile; he could— _should—_ be there himself, dealing with Daryl first-hand.

And then he is there himself, or more like Daryl's _here,_ and Rick's about to unlock the yard gate when he sees a slow-moving shadow in his peripheral vision.

He doesn't even need to turn and look to get pissed.

“Are you _kidding_ me, Daryl?”

To his credit, Daryl has the good grace to look apologetic. Holding his side and stepping carefully and Rick's blood picks up speed in his veins; he's moving forward, hooking that same one of Daryl's arms over his shoulder.

“Fucking bored, man.”

“And, what? You wanna go hunting?”

“I wanted air.”

Rick looks at him, drained pale by the inside of the cell block and all too pristine to really be _Daryl_ and instead of hauling his ass back up the stairs, he makes for the yard instead with Daryl as a passenger.

“Knew you wouldn't hand me back over to the Gestapo.”

“Little over-exaggerating don't you think?”

Daryl shrugs. “You haven't been up there.”

Rick takes that one like he deserves it.

He leaves Daryl leaning against the pen eyeing up the pigs, fetches a bedroll from the stash near the flowerbed—they sleep under the stars sometimes, him and Carl—and brings it back over, swooping low to hook back under Daryl's arm when he holds it up obligingly.

“If you're gonna be out here, you're gonna lie down,” he says by way of explanation. Daryl doesn't argue.

And so that's how they spend the afternoon, Rick digging and picking and planting but equally just watching Daryl's face tipped back against the sun, legs crossed at the ankles or one knee bent up or a half-dozen other ways of getting comfortable on your back.

He talks sparsely, idly dolling out languorous words and asking the kind of questions that get Rick speaking full sentences, but the pills are strong and Rick's content with the company alone, the heat on the back of his neck and the smell of sweet growing things.

Daryl falls asleep for a while, a little forty-minute stretch where his breathing goes deep and even, and Rick sits in the grass, elbows laid across his knees, and listens. The throng of walkers is far away and the breeze carrying their sounds away towards the trees and Rick tests his resolve in the moment, butts up against the barriers keeping a gun out of his hand and his ass out of the fire.

They're as unbreakable as ever, even with Daryl laid-up bruised because of stupid bad luck, out there with no one watching his back.

Rick wonders what that says about him.

He wonders it until Daryl wakes up with a groan, trying to inhale with a suddenly alarming difficulty. “Just,” he demands, “gimme a minute.”

Rick grinds his teeth, grips his own wrists between his knees, but Daryl's not stupid nor stubborn out of pride; none of them are, no theatrical heroes in a world where being an arrogant fuck gets people killed.

“Yeah, this hurts like a son of a bitch.”

If Daryl says it hurts, it fucking _hurts_.

“That deer did a real number on you, huh.”

“Shut the fuck up and get me some pills.”

Rick gives the side of Daryl's knee a couple of pats and gets to his feet, jogs all the way up to the block and hunts around for Hershel, answering his questions—three of them, ironically—before he's allowed to head back out with the Oxycodone.

“Yes, he's outside with me. Yes, he's absolutely fine. _No_ , he's not gardening.”

Hershel gets a droll glare for that last one.

“Like I'd have you gardening in your condition,” Rick idly complains about it, crouching down with a pill and a quarter-full bottle of water.

Up close, Daryl looks exceptionally bad; pale and strained, sweating even with his jacket off and rolled up under his head like a pillow. He struggles up onto one elbow and Rick realizes it's a bad, _bad_ idea the second he goes back down again, trying to spit curses but this breath failing him, all of him shaking and looking seized.

His teeth are set viciously in his bottom lip and Rick's out of practice with the bad stuff—the pain and risk and hopelessness, the stuff that makes his insides twist and throb—but it comes back to him, that trigger-quick instinct of cobbling together a plan.

He pulls out his switchblade, lays the Oxycodone on a flat stone in the grass and grinds it to fine powder, tipping it into the water bottle and giving it a rough shake.

“Hold still, I'm gonna feed you this,” he tells Daryl, trying to make it sound _not_ ridiculous and, failing that, not fucking skeevy as hell.

Daryl's face is a tight, frozen frown and then he snorts a laugh, “Jesus,” and Rick shakes his head, doesn't wanna talk about it.

Rick drinks back as much of the chalky water as he can and holds it in his mouth, planting his hands in the bedroll at Daryl's shoulders and ducking down low, avoiding Daryl's eyes completely, not even _thinking about it,_ but he needs—needs to angle him better, curl a hand around the back of Daryl's neck and hold him steady so he can _seal_ his mouth over where Daryl parts right up for him, ready and pliant.

He feeds the water between Daryl's lips slow enough to avoid choking, eyes down so he doesn't have to look but he feels— _feels_ Daryl swallow where the heel of his palm rests near Daryl's throat.

Daryl grips his arm at some point and they both feel Rick's muscles go tense.

He pulls back, a few drops slipping free and Daryl's lips slick with them, with water and maybe, maybe Rick's spit too. His eyes are worse, pain-sharp and dark and on Rick like the kind of confrontation that happens at the very end of a fraying tether.

He brings the bottle back up but this time he can't look away, Daryl won't let him somehow, that expression that dulls out the blighted world and hones it down to all those petty and immediate wants. He holds the water on his tongue to cling to the excuse but it doesn't allow him the luxury of an empty head this time, not with the soft warm feel of Daryl's mouth still on him.

“Waiting for something?”

Daryl, pushing it like he rarely does. If he pushes it fucking means something, it can't be nothing. Rick can't reduce it, be easier if he could.

He ducks back down with Daryl watching all the million or so excruciating miles. Rick presses their mouths together, holds Daryl's jaw and opens him up slowly, too soft and sweet, too much like a—yeah, Rick closes his eyes; too much like a fucking kiss.

It's a fatal error that turns into toppling dominoes. The water trickles down like an afterthought, Daryl's tongue touches Rick's bottom lip for a fraction of a second, when he pulls back it _sounds_ like a kiss, the tiny bit of suction making a damp little smack that's like a lump of hot rock dropping into Rick's stomach.

He jerks back gracelessly.

“That's all of it.”

Daryl's damp mouth quirks. “Thanks, mama bird.”

Fuck Daryl for making it seem so easy, making Rick dumb and idealistic like this. It was a ridiculous fucking idea anyway, Rick was just _looking_ for an excuse.

“Any time.”

Daryl considers him. “Oh, really?” Rick shrugs, kneeling and making shadows over Daryl's body. “'Cause I'm a little thirsty now that you mention it.”

Rick wants and _wants_ and he can't find any release from it, the ache set too deep and ravenous from time. He wants a lot of things, though, like his son to be a kid and his daughter safe and his people permanent. He wants abstractly, intensely. Things he doesn't know how to put into words, a way to shake off this slump that leaves him with stomachfuls of biting energy and no direction.

And here's Daryl, laid out like an offering. Grinning lazy against the sun like he knows he's got Rick right in line.

“You're about to get real doped up,” Rick points out and Daryl fists a hand in the front of his shirt, tugging.

“Better hurry up then, case people think you're takin' advantage.”

He can't fucking _think_ of a way to argue with that, just going when Daryl pulls and pulls some more, not letting him get away with a half-assed lean because he knows exactly where he wants Rick, straddling the earth at Daryl's hips, on all fours over him like a sun-guard.

Rick takes a panicked look around. “Daryl, _fuck_ , Maggie's in the tower and—“

“Y'already kinda did it,” Daryl starts, other hand Rick's forgotten all about sneaking up and sinking into his hair, “so, y'know,” and it seems a really good point and Daryl delivers it in a voice whisper-hoarse and dripping in greed; Rick'll take it.

He grits out, “Fuck,” just one last time, because no other form of expression comes close to measuring the compulsion to go to fucking _town_ on Daryl right now, grind down and possess him and make Daryl follow.

It's like Daryl can see it, too. “Not gonna break me, Rick.”

He leans low, arms straining, dipping his nose against Daryl's jaw. “Not today, no.”

Daryl starts a curse but Rick cuts it off, open mouth and scraping his teeth over Daryl's throat, nipping the skin and sucking a patch of blood to the surface and watching it fade, moving on to the next patch while Daryl arches back and lets him, makes this noise under Rick's lips like a hum.

“You don't tell me to stop and this is gonna get messy,” Rick drawls, damp and hot and too heavy to hold himself off anymore, legs folding under him and grinding his hips square over Daryl's. “Maggie's gonna get a real show up in that tower.”

Daryl grips at his thighs, over his hips. “Do you care?” Rick considers it, fits the palm of his roaming hand right over the shape of Daryl's cock through his pants. “ _Fuck_ , that a no?”

“Apparently.”

It's not arrogance to acknowledge how bad and how fucking _long_ Daryl's wanted this from him, and Rick trips hard on it, heart hammering borderline blood-thirsty. He flicks Daryl's button undone, fists the hair at the back of his neck and when Daryl tries to sit up, push himself into it, Rick drives him back down, catches Daryl's bottom lip between his teeth and opens him up all over again.

“Yeah,” Rick agrees with some point nobody made, keeping Daryl down with the hand in his hair, “that's good, you stay right there.”

Daryl fucking _nods_ , jerky and breathless, and Rick's cracked by it, pushing a shaking hand into the V of Daryl's fly and hunting for skin. He curls his fingers around the hard shape of Daryl's dick and nods along too, smears his lips against the open gasp of Daryl's mouth and tells him again, “Yeah, that's it,” and makes a fist, makes Daryl slam his eyes shut and choke on a groan. “You just take it.”

And he does, Daryl just fucking _takes_ it, Rick holding him still with his hips and his hand and jerking him quick and tight, hovering his open mouth over Daryl's but too mesmerised watching and _knowing_ to actually kiss him.

Daryl's eyes flutter open, he claws at Rick's shoulder, “God, don't fuckin' stop,” and it's all the warning he gets before Daryl slicks up his hand with come. He groans low and long, sounds a bit like he's in pain which might be part of it, way his muscles are seizing.

Rick stares down, mind vaporised. He feels his skin prickle, part uncompromising arousal and part paranoia, and he glances up at the tower to no sign of Maggie looking out this way, nobody watching from the gate.

“Jesus,” he breathes, dick aching in his jeans so extreme one stiff breeze might set him off, trembling so hard over Daryl his veins are standing out.

“C'mere,” Daryl drawls, bending a leg up and pulling at Rick's open shirt collar. The shift of Daryl's thigh is really fucking good, tongue slick in Rick's mouth almost as, and that's gonna do it if he can just get his brain ticking again, making sense.

He moves a leg over, straddling one of Daryl's thighs, telling him, “That's it,” and grinding down and Daryl brings it up as a hard counterpoint, gives him something to ride.

Takes no time at all, just a minute of Daryl's arm hooking around Rick's waist and all the strength in there adding gravity and friction and more heat, more breathless intensity. He presses his face into Daryl's shoulder and comes in his jeans like he hasn't in years feeling stunned and dirty and thinking how appropriate that is.

“Oh,” he mutters, trying to pull breath from the damp air, looking down at the slick skin of Daryl's shoulder, “good God.”

“Yeah.”

“Daryl, seriously,” Rick goes on for some fucking reason, trying to make the words come out to match the tide of dull panic trying to grip him in its undercurrent. He tips his forehead against Daryl's chest and shudders it out; warm and solid Daryl. Warm and solid and dependable and Rick might yet fucking take up a gun for him.

“Would you calm down, fuck.”

“I'm trying.”

Daryl makes it all the way up to his elbows this time, leant back with Rick still firmly in his lap because if he moves he's gonna keep on moving right into the woods. Makes him look, though, because what else is he gonna do.

“I'm calm.”

“Yeah?” Daryl cocks his head. “You look it.”

Rick tips his head back to the sky. “I'm so fucked up.”

“Ain't we all, man.”

“How're your ribs?”

“Sex and Oxy, how d'you think?”

Rick scoffs, a bit raw but it's a laugh. “I gotta get off you, we're just pushin' our luck now.”

He does, sticky in his jeans but he's felt grimier recently, and rolls into the grass on his back at Daryl's side, fucking _stays_ there. It slows his heart, acrid adrenaline sting letting up, letting him feel the pleasant after-buzz of his orgasm instead.

Daryl stretches out on his back, fastening up his pants. “If you wanna pretend it didn't happen—“

“I don't.”

He sees Daryl feel around for his cigarettes, pinch one between his lips and light it. “I wasn't about to give you an out, asshole, I was gonna say I'll punch you in the dick.”

“Fair enough,” Rick huffs. “That mean we're _going steady_ now?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

He'll take that as a no but even so, it's not like he gets his guts all twisted up about anybody else in the world. It's not just anyone who makes him wanna jump lanes like this.

Daryl wants him and Rick's pretty damn okay with it and wanting things has become a little faded to him—he's forgotten the limitless potential of it, can't shake the guilt that comes with being single-mindedly selfish—but dammit if Daryl isn't reminding him every day.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
